HISPANIC American students, PROFESSIONAL education, SOCIAL mobility, EDUCATIONAL change, URBAN schools, SCHOOL administration, and ETHNOGRAPHIC analysis

Abstract

No recent reform has had so profound an effect as no-excuses schools in increasing the achievement of low-income black and Hispanic students. In the past decade, no-excuses schools—whose practices include extended instructional time, data-driven instruction, ongoing professional development, and a highly structured disciplinary system—have emerged as one of the most influential urban school-reform models. Yet almost no research has been conducted on the everyday experiences of students and teachers inside these schools. Drawing from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside one no-excuses school and interviews with 92 school administrators, teachers, and students, I argue that even in a school promoting social mobility, teachers still reinforce class-based skills and behaviors. Because of these schools’ emphasis on order as a prerequisite to raising test scores, teachers stress behaviors that undermine success for middle-class children. As a consequence, these schools develop worker-learners—children who monitor themselves, hold back their opinions, and defer to authority—rather than lifelong learners. I discuss the implications of these findings for market-based educational reform, inequality, and research on noncognitive skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To clarify the conceptual underpinnings of Tinto's theoretical model of students' departure, the study presented here tested a conceptual model of the antecedents of sense of belonging to examine the extent to which Latino students' background characteristics and college experiences in the first and second years contribute to their sense of belonging in the third year. The study found that discussions of course content with other students outside class and membership in religious and social-community organizations are strongly associated with students' sense of belonging. First-year experiences have positive effects, while perceptions of a hostile racial climate have direct negative effects on students' sense of belonging in the third year. The results suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to minority students' subjective sense of integration in campus life, temporal sequencing of college experiences, and new avenues for understanding students' adjustment to college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent school segregation means not only that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools but also that their schools are unequal in performance. This study documents the extent of disparities nationally in school performance between schools attended by whites and Asians compared with those attended by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. It further examines the geography of school inequality in two ways. First, it analyzes the segregation of students between different types of school profiles based on racial composition, poverty, and metropolitan location. Second, it estimates the independent effects of these and other school and school district characteristics on school performance, identifying which aspects of school segregation are the most important sources of disadvantage. A focus on schools at the bottom of the distribution, as in No Schools Left Behind, would not ameliorate wide disparities between groups that are found across the whole spectrum of school performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how schools' racial and ethnic mix of students and teachers influences black, white? and Latino students' occupational expectations, educational aspirations, and concrete attitudes. Findings from multilevel-model analyses of data from the National Education Longitudinal Study show that Latinos' and blacks' beliefs are more optimistic and more pro-school in segregated-minority schools, especially when these schools also employ many minority teachers. Further analyses indicate that the positive effects of segregated-minority schools on blacks' and Latinos' beliefs reduce the black-white and Latino-white gaps in achievement. These findings suggest that teachers and administrators in segregated-white schools need to address how they lower minority students' beliefs and that segregated-minority schools can be improved by hiring many minority teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the impact of the educational aspirations of parents, teachers, close relatives, and peers on students' educational expectations across various racial groups. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, the authors found that both the levels of significant others' aspirations and the effects of these aspirations vary by students' racial statuses and types of significant others. First, Asian, Hispanic, and African American parents tend to hold higher educational aspirations for their children than do white parents, but the relative influences of Asian and Hispanic mothers and African American fathers on students' educational expectations are smaller than those of their white counterparts. Second, the aspirations of close relatives have greater effects on African American and Hispanic American students' educational expectations. Third, although teachers and friends vary in their aspirations for students, depending on their race, the effects of these aspirations are similar for all racial groups. The results suggest different processes through which familial significant others and other socializing agents influence the educational attitudes of students across racial groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To comply with ideals of multiculturalism and diversity, postsecondary institutions incorporate Latino students into distinct campus cultures. These cultures influence how students interact with one another, the university community at large, and communities outside of campus, ultimately shaping how students inhabit Latino politics. Drawing on data from 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork with six student organizations and 60 in-depth interviews, I compare Latino student organizations in a liberal arts college, a research university, and a regional public university. Building on inhabited institutional theory, I identify dimensions of campus cultures that work in interaction with students to produce three divergent forms of ethnic political expression: deliberative, divisive, and contentious. Inhabited institutionalism helps explain why Latino politics takes distinct forms in specific academic contexts and suggests that strong collegiate incorporation may paradoxically serve to suppress Latino student engagement in political activism outside the campus gates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]